TL;DR

AI’s capabilities are growing exponentially, possibly 1,000,000× in 10 years.
Learn enough coding to harness AI; let it automate heavy lifting.
Master conceptual math so you’re not clueless about AI’s advanced reasoning.
Broaden your knowledge: read, connect, see the big picture.
Anticipate personal, social, and political upheavals—foster resilience and good governance.
Act now—the intelligence explosion could come before most realize it.

The future arrives in a flash; our best move is to be ready before it knocks.

Introduction: A World on Fast-Forward

Imagine speeding up the last century of scientific and technological progress—Einstein’s insights, computer science breakthroughs, the decoding of DNA—into a single decade. That’s not just a sci-fi thought experiment anymore. The latest analyses, such as Fin Moorhouse & Will MacAskill's “Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion” (2025), suggest that advanced AI could compress a hundred years of progress into ten years—or less.

Why? Because AI is now improving at breakneck speed, doubling (or far more) in effective capabilities every 6–12 months, thanks to:

Enormous increases in training compute—scaling up by 10× or more per year
Rapid improvements in AI efficiency—algorithmic and hardware breakthroughs that make each FLOP of compute far more powerful
Proliferation of ‘post-training enhancements’ like advanced prompting methods, AI tool use, and multi-agent “scaffolding”

All of this points to a future in which AI systems collectively outthink the smartest humans at nearly every research and engineering task—and do so at a millionfold greater scale than we currently have human researchers. AI’s cognitive labor is set to dwarf our own.

At that point, the pace of scientific discovery and industrial growth could become so intense that it sparks what’s often called “the intelligence explosion.” Once AI can build better versions of itself, it may propel progress exponentially or super-exponentially—enough to radically disrupt everything from global governance to existential risk management.

And if that isn’t mind-bending enough: we might hit the ‘singularity’ before most people have even come to grips with what’s happening. If we continue at current levels of caution and preparation, an unthinkably transformative decade could catch humanity entirely off guard.

This article dives into (1) the key skills and knowledge y...

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